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Box Office: Melissa McCarthy's 'Tammy' Opens to $1.3M Tuesday Night

UPDATED: The New Line and Warner Bros. movie is one of four films opening on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday.

Melissa McCarthy's latest comedy, Tammy, debuted to a pleasing $1.3 million on Tuesday night as it began rolling out at the North American box office.

That's ahead of the $550,000 earned by recent female comedy The Other Woman, as well as last year's The Heat, starring McCarthy opposite Sandra Bullock, which took in $1 million on its first Thursday night. It's also ahead of the $450,000 earned by McCarthy's Identity Thief.

Tammy, marking the feature directorial debut of her husband, Ben Falcone, is one of four films opening everywhere on Wednesday on the eve of the long Fourth of July weekend. The others are family film Earth to Echo, supernatural horror title Deliver Us From Evil and conservative author and filmmaker DineshD'Souza's documentary America.

Still, with no massive tentpole opening (Transformers: Age of Extinction rolled out last weekend), revenue isn't expected to match last year's holiday frame, when Despicable Me 2 grossed a whopping $143.1 million between Wednesday and Sunday. To date, North American revenue for the summer is already down a steep 15 percent.

Age of Extinction should stay at No. 1 with a Wednesday-Sunday gross in the $55 million to $60 million range. The movie has already amassed well north of $300 million in worldwide ticket sales.

Tammy will easily crush the new offerings with a $45 million to $50 million debut, considering The Heat took in $47.2 million during the same stretch last year after opening the weekend before. Warner Bros. and New Line are being more conservative, predicting $40 million to $45 million.

The $20 million road-trip comedy is a key test for McCarthy and Falcone as a filmmaking team. The movie is getting dismal notices so far, but even worse reviews didn't hurt McCarthy's Identity Thief. Co-written and produced by the pair, Tammy stars McCarthy as a fed-up burger joint worker who leaves her husband behind for a trip with her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) to Niagara Falls.